


Midsummer's Dreams

by TheWeirdOnes



Category: His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Genre: I'm Sorry, Sobbing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-16
Updated: 2021-02-16
Packaged: 2021-03-18 07:42:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29486211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheWeirdOnes/pseuds/TheWeirdOnes
Summary: Lyra and Will are all grown up, and are eighteen. It's been about five years since IT happened, and they had to separate. But they've never lost the tradition of sitting on the bench every Midsummer's day.- TheBagginsAwayFromBagEnd
Relationships: Lyra Belacqua/Will Parry
Comments: 1
Kudos: 7





	Midsummer's Dreams

It was Midsummer's Day, at half past ten o'clock. In one and a half hours, Lyra would be going to the bench to meet Will. Oh, it was too cruel, she thought, like she did every year on this day. She still loved him with all her heart, and she knew Pan missed Kirjava. He still hadn't told her what they did together.  
Lyra took out the alethiometer, tracing her fingers around its crystal face, golden frame, looking at each individual symbol. Pantalaimon, slung around her neck, looked too.  
She had been studying hard with Dame Hannah for the past five years, and she had gone to the school and made wonderful friends. Privately, she suspected Lord Ariel really hadn't made an endowment for her, and it was all the Master.  
Progress with the alethiometer had gone slowly at first. She had been upset, unable to focus, as she lamented the loss of her intuition. But slowly, thinking of what Will would have done and said, she became patient, she learned the symbol-meanings. She now knew the first three meanings of every one of the symbols off by heart, and she was planning on learning all the rest.  
The bells around Jordan, all around her Oxford, began to chime eleven. She looked up, startled.  
"I guess we spent too long thinking, Pan," she said quietly.  
"Anogher half hour, and you should go to the bench," he responded.  
Still, sat in her bedroom at Jordan, she tried to justify the alethiometer's abandoning of her. Will's knife is broken, she told herself. It's only fair. But the thought of Will's knife and how it was well and truly gone brought tears to her eyes and made her hands tremble.  
"Please," she whispered to the alethiometer, tears streaming down her cheeks. "Please, answer me...one more time." Slowly, she reached for the wheels and found her hands turning them with ease, reaching down the old familiar ladders of meaning. The needle swung round and pointed at one symbol, and she understood what it meant at once.  
Dream.  
An idea suddenly flared up within her, and packing away the alethiometer she hurried to the Botanical Gardens. It was only ten past eleven, but she needed time. She began to relax her mind into the same trance as when she used to read the alethiometer, casting around for something, someone, but it didn't work. She blinked and left the trance, and tried something different. She imagined the happiness she had felt when she had been with Will, that brief period of time when they had been together. She sighed and calmed, feeling for the first time that constant aching in her heart dull, then fade to nothing. She felt such relief that her concentration was broken and she had to try again. Once. Twice. Thrice. She closed her eyes, allowing sleep to wash over her while she pictured Will in her mind, the joy she had felt when she put the fruit to his lips...  
And then she was asleep.  
And there, standing before her, with an expression of bewildered delight on his face, was her beloved Will.  
"Will!" she cried, rushing forward. "Will, oh my darling, my dear, I've missed you-" and then they kissed, and felt her heart would explode from happiness.  
"Lyra - Lyra, how-"  
"We're dreaming, Will," Lyra breathed. "But not. It's just like what that female angel said - we had to imagine, real hard, and then I fell asleep and we're sort of travelling but not really...it's like we've met in a middle place. A no-man's-land. I somehow pulled you in here when I came. Oh, Will, are you at the bench?"  
"Yes," said Will. "Oh, yes. I came early. I just couldn't bear waiting any longer to be with you, and Kirjava and I sometimes go there to be alone, just like you and Pan so maybe we have been there together when it's not Midsummer's..."  
"Yes, yes. Oh, Will you'll neve believe it I asked the alethiometer what to do and it said dream, and I have a feeling that's the last time I'll ever be able to read it just like that, and oh, Will, there's so much to tell you..." and so she spoke, she spoke of Dame Hannah and her lessons, she spoke of Iorek Byrinson and of Serafina Pekkala, she spoke of school and her new friends and the Master of Jordan and how, sometimes, she thought she could hear him and see Dust.  
Will, in turn, told her everything about his mother and how she had been cured, and how the two of them were sharing a house with Dr Malone, who was making many scientific discoveries and had a new job, and how he always missed Lyra every second of the day and wished he could fix the knife and cut a hole but of course he couldn't, and they both spoke of building the Republic of heaven and inadvertently spreading the word about the true stories and being kind and keeping Dust alive.  
They stayed there for what seemed like hours talking and talking, and seeing how the other had grown, how strong and handsome and like John Faa Will had become or how much like her parents - all of her parents, including Dr Malone and Mr Scoresby - Lyra was like, and how she was getting on with studies and how she was a brave and beautiful young lady.  
"Lyra," said Will suddenly, "how do I know I'm not dreaming and I didn't make it up?"  
"Oh you're not, Will I swear you're not, I'm really here, I am. Look, I'll give you something - it's been an hour and a half, and we have to go, Will - and when you wake up on the bench you'll still have it." Lyra kissed him again, so much like their kiss goodbye so many years ago, and when they parted a tear from her cheek was shining on his." Goodbye, Will," she whispered. "Goodbye, my love. I'll see you next year. And one day, in the future, we'll see each other down there again. And then we'll step through the window and get turned to atoms, and we'll meet up with Pan and Kirjava and we'll spend all of eternity together, just the four of us. I promise, Will. We will meet again."  
Will's eyes were shining with tears, too. "I love you, Lyra," he said, his voice hoarse. "And I'll wait every year of my life to be with you again. Even if we can't do this anymore, though I hope we can. I'll learn how, I promise. Even if we can never meet again in life, know that I love you forever and ever."  
The last thing they felt before they were pulled back to their worlds was the soft touch of the other stroking their daemon, just like they had done all those years ago.  
As Will woke, Kirjava in his lap, he lifted up his hand and brushed his cheek. Her tear was still there.  
And watching above a weeping Lyra, invisible in the light, Xaphania smiled.


End file.
